Ius Gentium and <i>Ius Naturale</i> in Western European Political and Legal Thought in the 17th Century

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the problem of the correlation of the legal categories ius gentium and ius naturale in the context of the political and the Western European legal thought in the 17th century. The 17th century, rich in historical events, known in the Russian historiography as the «rebellious age», becomes a turning point not only in the history of the entire European civilization, but also in the history of philosophical thought and political science, at the intersection of which the teachings of the state and law were formed. The 17th century — the time of the systemic crisis of the feudal socio-economic formation and the traditional religious ideology strongly associated with it — gives impetus to the development of capitalist economic relations in Western Europe, which was accompanied by a sharp increase in novelty in the field of philosophical and political thought. In the 17th century, prominent European political thinkers paid quite a lot of attention to the theoretical coverage of the problems of the natural state, the social contract, as well as the analysis of the categories of freedom and justice. There was a gradual departure from the methodology of peripatetism, accompanied by a revision of the intellectual heritage of ancient political and legal thought, although at the same time European political thinkers and jurists continued to widely use the terminology of classical Roman law, but in a modified semantic field. One of the most important areas of application of the ancient legal heritage is the field of international relations, closely related to the further intensification of international commerce, religious reformation, as well as the legal mechanism for declaring war and concluding peace. In the regulation of international relations, they actively used legal systems, well known from Antiquity, but greatly transformed by Modern times, and which, according to a long-established tradition, were called ius gentium and ius naturale. Thus, the paper highlights a rather ambiguous problem of the correlation of ius gentium and ius naturale in Western European political and legal thought in the 17th century.